Goals
Teaching pronunciation can be a challenge. It requires some
technical knowledge about phonology, an ability to predict
the problems students may have, plus a good supply of
strategies, tools, and activities to help students understand
and practice. Teaching pronunciation implies that the teacher
can provide a good pronunciation model for students to
follow, give explanations and demonstrations of things the
students need to know, and lead them through a series of
practice activities to help them make their new pronunciation
habits automatic.
There are many good books about teaching pronunciation. So
why does the world need another one? First, all the existing
books are books. They are written on paper, representing
sounds primarily through written symbols and descriptions.
They may come with a CD with recordings of examples and
exercises, but sound is not an integral part of the “story.”
Pronunciation is a unique topic that really needs sound as
part of the presentation. With recent innovations in
multimedia electronic book formats, we can now provide
explanations that combine words and sounds.Second, books and articles about teaching pronunciation
have almost always been written with an audience of native
speakers of English in mind. Besides assuming that readers
have an instinctive knowledge of the sounds and “music” of
English, most books don’t touch on many issues that teachers
who have learned English as a second language want and
need to know about—questions that may not occur to native
speaker teachers.This book is written with special consideration of the needs
and interests of nonnative speakers of English, who are, after
all, the majority of English teachers worldwide. I assume that
most of these teachers are working in EFL situations, that is,
in countries where English is not a commonly spoken
language and students have few chances to hear English in
iPREFACE